Hunting has been on the decline throughout the U.S. for a while, but in today's New York Times, Sean Patrick Farrell has a story asserting that there's a grassroots movement of urban and suburban gourmets picking up rifles to harvest their own venison:

Some American chefs who grew up with rifles in their hands have long been passionate about wild game, even if the law forbids them from serving it in their restaurants. The subject has also been taken up recently by the writers Michael Pollan, who shoots a wild boar in “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” and Steven Rinella, who chronicled his quest to kill a wild American bison in “American Buffalo.” But until recently, tree stands and Mossy Oak camouflage were rarely mentioned in the same breath as, say, heirloom tomatoes.

Anthony Licata, editor of Field & Stream magazine, said he wasn’t surprised that a new generation of eaters was discovering what traditional hunters have known all along: “There’s nothing more organic and free range than meat you hunt for yourself and your family,” he said.

Like Jack Shafer over at Slate, I'm always suspicious of Times "trend" stories, but as someone who hunts without apology and believes it offers the best way of managing animal populations in human-occupied landscapes, I hope Farrell has discovered something real here.